


left to survive somehow

by thatsparrow



Category: Jurassic World Trilogy (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Fallen Kingdom - Spoilers, Gen, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom - Freeform, Kid Fic, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 12:50:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15073532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsparrow/pseuds/thatsparrow
Summary: They try listening to the radio, but even the staticky FM station that only plays oldies soon interrupts the music with breaking-news alert broadcasts.Pteranodonsflying over Vegas. Suburban parents waking up to find anAnkylosaurhas busted through their white picket fence. Surfers off the coast of Cuba scared out of the water by aMosasaurussighting. Claire switches off the radio for an old Queen cassette she finds in the glove compartment, and soon, Owen is singing along to "Somebody to Love" and Claire finds herself smiling without meaning to.--Or, after Lockwood's, Owen and Claire figure out what happens next.





	left to survive somehow

**Author's Note:**

> this is my way of trying to justify the ending of _Fallen Kingdom_ in which owen and claire just? abscond with a child?? apparently???
> 
> i also couldn't figure out exactly where owen's cabin is supposed to be, so I'm saying it's in montana because I like the narrative consistency of that
> 
> title from "myling lullaby" by jonathan eng

They're on the road in one of the abandoned SUVs before they know exactly where they're going — Maisie stretched out in the backseat, sleeping (or doing a convincing enough job of pretending) with her arms wrapped around a leather-bound scrapbook she'd insisted on salvaging from the house. Owen's got one hand on the steering wheel and the other drumming a rhythm against the gearshift, and even though he glances over at her every so often, reassuring, Claire can see lines of tension running through his shoulders. His expression is telling her that everything's going to be fine, but his knuckles are white where they're flexed around the steering wheel. He doesn't know how this plays out any better than she does.

And Claire's just so _tired_. Tired the way she was three years ago on Nublar after the death of the _Indominus_ : waiting at the docks with one arm around Gray and ten missed calls from Karen and meanwhile still enough adrenaline in her veins to power a fucking car battery. A bone-deep kind of tired, like her body doesn't know it's allowed to slow down. Then again, Claire doesn't know how she's supposed to breathe easy when things were life-or-death less than an hour ago. Doesn't know how to relax back into the leather of the passenger seat like she didn't just see the _Indoraptor_ ripping through the bones of an InGen employee. She can still feel blood leaking out slow from under the makeshift bandage Owen wrapped around her thigh, tacky and half-clotted where the Indo's claw had sunk down into her skin.

(It'll probably scar, but Claire doesn't mind. Finds herself feeling thankful, even, that this time she'll walk away with a wound that's visible.)

Lockwood's estate sits at the end of a couple miles of snaking pavement; in the beam of the SUV's headlights, Claire can see a strip of double-yellow and the shadowy pillars of the redwoods bordering the road and not much else. She thinks of what this stretch of forest would have looked like a few hundred years ago, and then a few thousand, and then sixty-five million. She thinks of apex predators that would have learned to live and hunt in the spaces between the trees. She tilts her head towards the window and swears she catches a flash of orange in the distance, like moonlight skating off the Indo's stripe of golden scales.

(It was Wu's idea to give the _Indominus_ a sibling. He'd earned a particular appreciation for backup measures in his line of work, and so who's to say he only built one of the _Indoraptors_? How can they really be sure that the nightmare is over?)

There had been a streak of red on the chrome handle of the SUV, but Owen wiped it away with his elbow before Maisie could see. Claire wonders whether the _Indominus_ or the _Indoraptor_ racked up a higher death count and hates herself for thinking it.

 

—

 

It's a little after 2 AM when they decide to stop for the night, pulling into the parking lot of a rundown Motel 6 off I-80. Claire waits in the car with Maisie while Owen talks to the half-asleep teenager at the front desk, coming back a few minutes later with two keys to room 110.

"We're Owen and Claire Grant, if it comes up," he says, voice low as he carries the still-sleeping Maisie out of the car, her head tilted against his chest.

"Grant?" Claire whispers, half-smiling and eyebrows raised, "I'm not sure he'd appreciate that."

(She doesn't say anything about the "Owen and Claire" part of it—knows that a married couple with a kid will draw less questions than...well, whatever it is that they are. Former coworkers who technically committed kidnapping, maybe? Still, she thinks about his hands pressed to the glass of the sinking Gyrosphere, pulling him down for a kiss in Lockwood's foyer, and realizes it's a conversation they should probably have at some point. "Owen and Claire.")

The room is cluttered with two queen-sized beds and a dresser that looks like it'd go for a discount at a garage sale, chipped wood paneling sitting low on the fibers of a discolored carpet. Owen crosses the room and pulls back the comforter on one of the beds, settling Maisie down between the sheets and sliding off her shoes before he tucks the blankets around her chin.

"You know I met him once?" He says to Claire, taking a seat on the other bed and letting himself fall back with enough weight to rattle the mattress. "Back when, on a dig in Montana. I said something disrespectful about raptors and he, uh, didn't take kindly to that." Claire can see him smiling up at the ceiling as she sits down on the empty stretch of duvet next to him. "Damn near scared the shit out of me, too — spent the rest of the trip looking over my shoulder, half-convinced his raptor bones were gonna come back to life and hunt me down in the Montana desert and slice my stomach open."

"Clearly the lesson didn't stick," Claire says, nudging his leg with her foot.

"Got another earful from him when he heard I'd signed onto Masrani's behavioral study. Don't think he remembered me from Montana—don't think it mattered. I was just another dumbass with enough hubris to rival Hammond, and didn't I know it was gonna get me or some other fool killed? Didn't I understand that a raptor wasn't a fucking puppy or some captivity-bred zoo animal you could train to pull tricks? He told me Robert Muldoon didn't die just so a new crop of InGen assholes could make the same mistakes all over again."

He lets out a slow breath, running his hands over his face. Dust and dirt creased into the lines of his palms and the rust-brown flakes of something that could be dried blood. "I wouldn't have said yes if I knew this is where it was all heading—Hoskins' bullshit about raptors running missions for the military and whatever ninth-circle-of-hell nightmare Wu decided to dream up this time. All for a fatter fucking paycheck."

"This isn't on you," Claire says, quiet, reaching over to rest her hand briefly on Owen's arm. He doesn't get up, but he does reach over to take her hand in his, letting his thumb trace a back-and-forth across her knuckles. A kind of comfort in the slight scrape of his calluses on her skin.

"Yes, it is," he says, and now he sits up until he's looking at Claire, the two of them lit up in the orange-yellow glow coming through the curtains from a streetlamp in the lot. He's half-neon, half-shadows from where Claire is sitting, looking more tired than she's ever seen him—new lines across his forehead, and blue-black half-moons dug in under his eyes. (Then again, she's sure she doesn't look any better). "They'd have scrapped the project if they thought the raptors couldn't follow orders. But they followed mine, listened to me out in the field, and there's not a lot of real estate between that and whatever Wu and Mills were hoping would happen with the Indo."

 _And who approved the_ Indominus? Claire thinks, but doesn't say. _Who signed off on every report you filed on the raptors?_

Owen lets go of Claire's hand and stands up, rolling some of the ache out of his shoulders. "Doesn't matter now, I guess. Enough blame to go around for everybody, let alone the new set of problems that the world's got to contend with." He glances over at Maisie, and he doesn't have to mention what Mills said for Claire to know it's on his mind, same as hers. "Speaking of—you and I need a plan for what comes next."

"Yeah, okay," Claire says. She's feeling eight different kinds of exhausted, but coming up with last-minute Plan B solutions is something she can do in her sleep. "Let's figure this out."

 

—

 

The next morning, Owen takes the SUV and comes back driving an old VW bus, orange paint scraped away at the bumper and a basketball-sized dent in the driver's-side door, but working well enough to get them where they're going.

("What about the cabin?" Owen says.

"Doesn't InGen know to find you there?" Claire asks, frowning.

He shakes his head. "InGen reached out to Barry, and Barry gave me the heads-up that someone might come asking after my help. Wouldn't be the worst place to lie low for a few weeks, until we see how everything shakes out.")

While he's gone, Claire showers for what feels like the first time in a week (even though it's barely been two days since they boarded the plane for Nublar, and how the fuck is _that_ possible? How has it not been six months since she and Franklin were cornered by the _Baryonyx_? How has it not been a year since Mills reached out asking for her help?). She rinses her clothes as best she can in the bathtub, the water turning a dirty shade of brown as she scrubs blood and sweat from the fabric. Sits in a towel on the bathroom floor as she re-wraps her leg with a strip of white cotton torn from one of the pillowcases.

("Mills told the world we died on Nublar," Claire says, sliding off the bed to take a seat next to Owen on the motel carpet.

"Maybe that's not the worst thing."

"Are you serious?"

"You remember what happened after the park closed, Claire," he says. "The government looking for somebody to blame and enough of that heat landing on you even with Masrani's company shouldering most of the burden. What do you think's going to happen this time? The world's wealthiest assholes ripped to pieces, and dinosaurs let loose on the mainland—politicians and whoever's controlling InGen are going to want a target. Who better than two people caught up in the _Indominus_ scandal, too? It's an easy story to sell. Not to mention—" he trails off, tilting his head towards Maisie.

"Yeah, okay," Claire says, letting out a slow breath. "I see what you're saying. Us being dead makes things simpler."

"Probably our best shot at staying out of prison, too.")

It's a little after 10 when Owen gets back with a couple of Subway breakfast sandwiches and a plastic bag from CVS. After Maisie eats and goes to clean up—carrying travel-sized bottles of shampoo and conditioner and a new toothbrush—Owen sets about taking care of Claire's leg. He cleans out the puncture with packets of disinfectant from the drugstore first-aid kit and sews it closed with a handful of neat stitches, dressing the whole thing properly with a band-aid. He glances up at her while he works, murmuring the occasional "sorry" when he sees her forehead crease or her hands flexing. She tells him that she's fine, and she means it—compared to the past few days, this is a sort of pain that feels easy to endure.

His callused fingertips are rough against her skin, but his hands are gentle, and it doesn't _surprise_ Claire, exactly—things weren't all bad before he took off for the mountains, and Claire knows firsthand how delicate his touch can be—but she is surprised at how much she missed it. Missed _him_.  

Owen's hands linger on her leg for an extra moment after he's done, and when Claire looks up, she sees that he's staring at her with an expression she can't quite parse. But then they hear Maisie opening the bathroom door and Owen moves away before Claire can figure out what he was thinking.

 

—

 

It's a nineteen-hour drive to Owen's cabin in Montana and he thinks they can get there by the next morning if they push through the night. They're running low on the cash they had split between them, so Claire stops at the nearest ATM and withdraws from her savings up to the daily limit, feeling like a stranger as she folds twenties into her wallet.

("Withdrawing a shitload of money isn't exactly inconspicuous," Owen points out, leaning against the side of the van as Claire punches in her PIN number. "If someone sees this level of activity on your account, they're gonna guess you're still alive."

" _If_ ," Claire says, tapping her fingers absently against the metal. "Besides, pretending to be dead won't matter if we can't pay for gas or food or toothpaste. We need money, Owen."

"Yeah," he says at last, conceding. "I know. I'm not saying it ain't a worthwhile risk, but it is still a risk."

"Then let's hope our luck holds out."

Owen snorts. "What luck.")

 

—

 

They fill up the VW's tank from a quiet 76 station just off the freeway, the lot empty save for a battered RV parked in the far corner and a Toyota Corolla loaded with boxes and a UCSC decal on the rear window. Claire stays at the pump, cleaning gum wrappers and an empty carton of cigarettes from the center console while she waits, squeegeeing crushed gnats and highway dust off the windshield just for something to do with her hands. When Owen and Maisie walk out of the rest stop a few minutes later, Claire can see that Maisie's wearing a pair of blue-tinted sunglasses and Owen's got a John Deere cap pulled low over his eyes. As Maisie climbs into the backseat, working away at a bag of Chex Mix like she's performing an excavation, Owen hands Claire a wrinkled copy of that day's _New York Times_. Before she can ask, he flips the paper open to one of the center pages, and that's when Claire sees a couple paragraphs about Sibo's eruption and the Nublar rescue-op. And there, two-thirds of the way down the page, Claire sees a grainy photo of herself that she recognizes from the DPG website.

"Do they know—?" Claire starts, but Owen shakes his head.

"It lists both of us among the casualties on Nublar."

Claire nods, then pops the latch on the glove compartment, fishing through spare napkins and cellophane-wrapped plastic cutlery until she finds the knife that Owen used to keep strapped to the back of his belt. He raises an eyebrow when he sees her slip it into her pocket, but she waves away his unasked question with a look that says he should know to trust her by now.

Ten minutes later, she walks out of the rest-stop bathroom at the back of the building, her hair cut short below the ears and falling a little uneven in the back.

"I think it looks nice," Maisie says when Claire gets into the car.

It's short enough that she doesn't think anyone will recognize her, but short enough, too, that Claire doesn't really recognize herself. And she's sure it's the right call, but it also feels like the move of a fugitive; she thinks back to the stack of creased twenties in her wallet and wonders how so much could've changed in a few days.

 

—

 

The air conditioning in the van breaks somewhere around Tahoe, so Claire and Owen roll down their windows with the hand-cranks set into the doors, Owen's getting stuck while still halfway up. It doesn't help the heat much, but the air outside is fresher than the secondhand smell of stale Cheeto dust worked into VW's carpet, so Claire supposes it's an improvement. In the rearview mirror, she can see Maisie smiling as the wind pulls strands of hair loose from her ponytail, gas-station sunglasses sliding low on her nose. She looks happy, and Claire feels suddenly tempted to reach over the center console and rest a hand on Owen's shoulder.

Still, she's scared for Maisie more than anyone else in all this. Scared at the way Maisie already looks at Owen and herself like parents, and meanwhile the closest that Claire's come to being a guardian was the week that Zach and Gray stayed at her apartment after Karen had to leave last-minute for work.

They'd asked Maisie what she wanted to do, back before they left Lockwood's—whether she wanted to go with Zia and Franklin to San Francisco, or whether there was someone else she wanted them to call. A relative or a family friend that she trusted. But Maisie had shaken her head after every question, adamant about wanting to stay with Owen and Claire wherever exactly they were going (not mattering much to her that they still didn't have a destination in mind). Claire wonders if she should have pushed back, or insisted they wait for the police, or figured out Maisie's next of kin. But she couldn't, or didn't know how—not when Maisie was looking at both of them with a measure of trust and Claire was so very worried about breaking it.

 

—

 

They're driving through Sparks, Nevada when Claire sees a Target sign in a stucco-walled strip mall off the freeway and tells Owen to take the next exit. Inside, they load up one of the red plastic carts with 5-packs of Hanes underwear and socks, on-sale sports bras, jeans, henleys. They buy bulk-sized bottles of shampoo and conditioner, two-for-one deals on deodorant and toothpaste and disposable razors. Tampons and toilet paper. Banana Boat sunscreen.

In the kids' section, Maisie picks out a pair of pink plaid shorts and a yellow t-shirt with a T-Rex on it. Claire doesn't know if this means that Maisie is actually okay or if she's just trying to convince Claire and Owen that she is (and maybe trying to convince herself, too). Claire wants to take her aside and tell her that it's fine if she isn't fine. Wants to find a non-patronizing way of describing the nights she woke up at 1 AM, sweating through her shirt and heart beating loud in her throat. Blinking her eyes open after dreaming of the neon-red road flare and Rexy coming out of the shadows, each footstep weighty enough to rattle Claire's bones. She wants to tell Maisie about Gray calling her in the middle of the night, talking faster than Claire could follow about the _Indominus'_ teeth closing around the Gyrosphere.

She wants to, but she doesn't know where the _fuck_ to begin—let alone trying to have that conversation between light-up sneakers and a child-sized mannequin wearing a pair of polka-dot pajama pants. So Claire doesn't say anything about Nublar or the _Indominus_ or the Indo and instead tells Maisie that she likes the shirt and that they should find her a new jacket, too.

Owen grabs bottles of water and a couple boxes of granola bars, and Claire picks up a pair of non-prescription glasses and keeps them on until they're going through checkout. They swing through the clearance aisle where Maisie finds a lavender-scented candle that she asks Claire if they can get. Claire says yes, and Owen adds a second to the cart when Maisie isn't looking.

It almost feels like a family shopping trip, Claire thinks. Almost—but she and Owen keep their heads down whenever they walk past a security camera, and Maisie isn't really their child, and she and Owen aren't a couple, they're—

Well. Who knows what the fuck she and Owen are, exactly.

They load the plastic shopping bags into the VW's trunk and Claire thinks about how easy it would be to pull Owen down into a kiss in the parking lot, the air muggy around her ankles and a patch of sunburn on her nose. She wants to, but she doesn't, and does her best not to think about it as they get back in the car.

 

—

 

“Can we get McDonald’s?" Maisie asks, somewhere in the middle of the Nevada desert.

"McDonald's?" Claire says, glancing up at Maisie in the rearview.

"Yeah," she says, a little quiet. "Or...I don't know. I just haven't ever—"

"No, it's okay." Claire turns to look over at Maisie, offering (what she hopes is) a reassuring smile. "Of course we can. Next one we see, alright?"

It's a little under an hour before they catch sight of the sign off the freeway, pulling into the drive-thru under familiar neon-yellow arches in the town of Lovelock where Maisie gets a Happy Meal with a 6-piece Chicken McNuggets and fries in a wax-paper container. Owen eats his cheeseburger with one hand as he merges back onto I-80 East, and Claire props one foot up on the dash while she fishes Oreo pieces out of her McFlurry.

Inside Maisie's Happy Meal box is a stuffed plush penguin that fits neatly into her palm who she names "Alan". Owen hides his laugh and Claire thinks about the evolutionary line from dinosaurs to birds, wondering if it wouldn't have been better for everyone if Hammond had built a spared-no-expense aviary and called it a day.

 

—

 

They try listening to the radio, but even the staticky FM station that only plays oldies soon interrupts the music with breaking-news alert broadcasts. _Pteranodons_ flying over Vegas. Suburban parents waking up to find an _Ankylosaur_ has busted through their white picket fence. Surfers off the coast of Cuba scared out of the water by a _Mosasaurus_ sighting. Claire switches off the radio for an old Queen cassette she finds in the glove compartment, and soon, Owen is singing along to "Somebody to Love" and Claire finds herself smiling without meaning to.

(Still, with all the reports, there's a part of her that thinks about Blue. Thinks about what happens when she eats too many labradors or takes a couple bites out of some unsuspecting hiker and the world decides she's too dangerous to be left alive. She wants to ask Owen, but doesn't know how.)

 

—

 

The thought hits her at dusk, somewhere past the Idaho-Nevada border.

"Oh, god— _Karen_."

"Your sister?" Owen asks, glancing over with a look of mild concern as Claire presses her face into her palms. Maisie's napping in the backseat, stirring a little at the sound.

"God, I didn't even—" Claire shakes her head, mouth pressed together in a thin line. "That article, Owen. If the rest of the world thinks that we died on Nublar, then so does she. Zach and Gray, too. I can't just...I have to let her know that I'm _alive_ , at least."

"Hey, it's okay," Owen says, reaching over to rest a hand on Claire's shoulder. "It's gonna be fine, alright? Next rest stop, we'll find a payphone and you can call her. Your nephews, too." His thumb runs a back-and-forth line above her collarbone, and Claire feels some of her tension ease. "Sound good?" He asks, letting his hand slip down to her shoulder blade before he pulls back.

"Yeah," Claire says, almost managing a smile. "Thanks."

"It's nothing," Owen says. "I get it—hell, I remember your sister. First time she took us to dinner, I think I was more scared staring her down than the _Indominus_. At least I knew the dinosaur would kill me quick, but your sister looked like she'd be happy to slow-roast me on a spit if I screwed things up with you."

Claire laughs. "She's a little protective."

"A mother _Triceratops_ is protective—your sister is downright  _terrifying_."

 

—

 

Owen exits at a rest stop a few miles down the road, parking the van opposite an eighteen-wheeler and waiting in the car while Claire takes a handful of spare coins from the VW's center console and heads to the pay phones behind the bathrooms. After the first few rings, she's worried the call is going to voicemail, but then she hears the same "hello?" that Karen uses to talk to telemarketers and unfamiliar caller IDs, and Claire could cry at the relief of it.

"Karen? Listen, it's Claire—"

" _Claire_?" Karen says, quiet, and Claire can't tell whether she's crying or laughing or both. Claire keeps the conversation short, telling Karen that she's with Owen, and that they're both okay, and trying to stay off anyone's radar until the news has died down.

("Owen? Like, your Owen? Is that...I mean, are you two—?"

Claire lets out an amused breath, shaking her head with the phone pressed to her ear, even though she knows Karen can't see it. She tells Karen there's nothing going on with Owen, that they're just friends—which sounds like a lie as soon as she says it—and that she trusts him—which is unvarnished truth.

"Just—promise me you'll be careful, Claire."

"Always.")

Claire doesn't mention Maisie, or Owen's cabin in Montana, or anything about the part they played at Lockwood's — not because she doesn't trust Karen, but because she figures it's a favor to give Karen fewer complications to keep track of. She asks Karen to give Zach and Gray her love, and tells Karen that she loves her, too, and then she hangs up the phone in the cradle and walks back to the car.

"Feeling better?" Owen asks when she pulls open the passenger door.

"Yeah," Claire says, managing a genuine smile. "Much."

 

—

 

The sun is still rising when they hit the end of the dirt road that opens up to Owen's lakeside cabin, light shining through the open beams in the half-finished roof and glinting sliver off the bumper of his RV. Claire hadn't paid much attention to the view on her first visit—more focused on breaking past the flat cynicism in Owen's expression than staring at the mountains—but there is something a little breathtaking in the dawn sun slipping over the heights, sending these blinding rose-white reflections skidding off the surface of the lake.

(It's maybe not the same as the first time she saw a _Brachiosaur_ , or her apartment balcony on Nublar that overlooked the _Mosasaurus_ lagoon, but it's certainly not a _bad_ view. One she could get used to, even.)

They park the VW behind the RV and pile out onto the grass, stretching their legs properly for the first time in almost a full day. Claire's got an ache in her lower back and Owen's trying to bite back a yawn, but when they turn, they see Maisie splayed out in the grass, shielding her eyes from the sun and grinning wider than Claire's ever seen her.

Claire thinks that maybe they can make this work.

 

—

 

There's just the one bedroom in the RV, so Owen gives it up to Claire and Maisie and takes to sleeping under the stars somewhere between the steps of the camper and the future front door of the cabin. Stretched out in a sleeping bag next to a low-burning campfire, sparks shining in the ashes like an earthbound set of stars. Some nights, Claire sits next to him, a big knit blanket thrown over her shoulders and knees pulled up to her chest, trading stories with Owen in the quiet until her legs fall asleep.

Sometimes, they talk about Maisie—Claire saying she needs to be in school and Owen saying that he was just about raised in the wilds of Montana and didn't he turn out fine? (Claire doesn't say anything whenever he brings up that line of logic, just raises her eyebrows until Owen relents, privately wondering what the minimum sentence is for kidnapping).

Sometimes, they talk about Nublar—not about the volcano, or Mills' mercenaries, or realizing just how badly they'd fucked up, but about their early days working at the park. Simon taking Claire on a tour of the island, pulling her away from her notes before giving her front-row seats to Rexy's feeding and the _Mosasaurus_ show. Roaming around the valley in a Gyrosphere telling her that the interview was over and the job was hers if she wanted it, but that—good god, Claire—if you're going to work in the park, you have to _appreciate_ it.

(Sometimes, in her nightmares, she's back in the jungle, watching his helicopter spin in a black cloud of _Pteranodons_ before crashing through the roof of the Aviary. Then she wakes up, and hates herself all over again for having been short-sighted enough to have approved the _Indominus_.)

Owen reminisces on his first months working with the baby raptors, telling Claire a story for each of the scars littering his fingers. The divot missing in his thumb from when Blue was still small enough to fit in his arms and took playtime too far. A series of circular patches of scar-tissue across his palm when Charlie once got frightened and dug in with her talons. There's a certain kind of love in his voice whenever he talks about the raptors—not just Blue, but the rest of the pack as well—and it's one of the things that first endeared him to Claire. He's such a goddamn mother hen.

And, sometimes, they talk about their history. Not to argue about who ended things first, or trade accusations of blame—no, instead, they talk about the best parts of their relationship. Staying in on Claire's couch, splitting takeout containers of Thai food and working through her Netflix queue. Friday nights on the back of Owen's motorcycle, driving along the Pacific coast with the smell of salt in her nose and her cheek pressed against Owen's back. Sleeping in on Saturday mornings, waking up when Owen would press his lips to her shoulder. And, when it gets late, sometimes they laugh about that first failed date on Nublar. By now, it's been long enough that they can both look back on it without any bitterness—the ways that they both fucked up and the wishing that they hadn't.

Claire wishes it hadn't taken them two separate life-threatening circumstances to get to this point.

 

—

 

One afternoon, Claire comes back from picking up groceries in town and asks Maisie if she wants to make s'mores after dinner.

"I don't know," she says, taking a break from helping Owen hammer up planks of plywood to sit on the edge of the deck. "I've never had them?"

"You've never had s'mores?" Owen asks from behind the half-built wall. "Kid, how is that _possible_?"

Maisie shrugs, and Claire wonders—not for the first time—what life must have been like for her inside Lockwood's estate. "I asked Iris a few times if we could go camping, but it never happened. Then Grandpa got sick, and then—" Maisie's words trail off, and Claire doesn't need to ask to know what happened next.   

"Tonight, then. You wanna give it a try?"

Maisie swings her legs back and forth on the edge of the deck, tapping her fingers against the wood grain. "Yeah, alright," she says after a beat, dropping to the ground to help Claire put away the rest of the food.

That night, after they've eaten and washed up, Claire and Owen teach Maisie to roast marshmallows over the campfire. She turns her skewer slowly, watching the white darken to a toasted-brown color with a look of utmost intensity, like she's handling gold instead of spun sugar. Owen's first two catch on fire, and when Maisie looks at him consolingly, he smiles and says, "Don't worry, kid. I like 'em better that way."

After her first s'more, Maisie has the sticky residue of marshmallow fluff on her fingers and a smear of chocolate at the side of her mouth, but she eats three more before going to bed, so Claire counts the night a success.

 

—

 

On the days when it hits the mid-80s—sunny enough that Claire gets burned even through a second layer of sunscreen—Owen takes her and Maisie down to the lake, packing Ziploc-bagged sandwiches and cans of Diet Coke and Minute Maid lemonade into blue-canvas totes fished out of the VW's trunk. Maisie wears her gas-station sunglasses and Claire's got a sunhat that she picked up from a mom-and-pop store in town, following Owen carefully down the switchbacking trail to the small beach at the lake's edge (more pebbles than sand, but bordering some of the clearest and bluest water that Claire's ever seen).

Claire teaches Maisie to do handstands in the water, and Owen shows her how to catch minnows in a purple plastic bucket, and between the three of them, they see who can get the most skips out of the flat pebbles lining the beach. And when they're just about worn out, they'll float on their backs just off the shore, faces turned to the sun.

 

—

 

They've been in Montana for a couple weeks when Claire comes to Owen one night with a bottle of tequila and asks if they can talk.

"Talk?"

"Yeah," she says, a little uncertain.

"Okay, sure," Owen says, tilting his head towards an open stretch of grass in front of the fire. "What about?"

Claire takes a seat, and then a long pull from the bottle. "Us. Dating. Where we're at now, I guess."

He lets out a surprised laugh and reaches for the tequila, downing a shot himself and wiping his mouth on the back of his sleeve. "Well, uh—shit, Claire. Okay. Let's talk about us."

She's thought about these words often enough that they feel like a familiar refrain. Turned them over in her mind while watching him work on the cabin under a midday sun, or adjusting the brim of his John Deere cap while he drove down I-80, or even earlier, when Mills first mentioned Blue, and Claire realized where the conversation was going and felt tempted to brace herself against the desk in case her legs gave out. She's been thinking about this since she called Karen and said "just friends" and wished she could say something more, or when they were standing in the Target parking lot and she wanted to lean up and kiss him, or that first night after Lockwood's, when they shared a motel bed and she spent half the night thinking about crossing the empty stretch of mattress to wrap an arm around his chest.

"I still care about you," Claire says after a beat, fighting not to look away, even if she wants nothing more than to drop her eyes to the ground. "And I—I don't know. If there's a chance that this could work—if _something_ could work between us—I'd want that." She takes another sip of tequila to keep from losing her nerve, feeling the spice burn all the way down her throat. "But then I think, shouldn't I know better? Haven't we been here before? More than once, too, and look how well any of _that_ turned out." Claire blinks, looking away from Owen, tongue feeling heavy with tequila and words feeling heavy with regret.

"I want to be with you, but that wanting doesn't matter much if we're just… _different_. And we are, Owen—you know we are." She lets out a humorless laugh. "I don't know if it says anything good that the only time when _this_ —" her hands move in the empty space between them, "—seems to work is when we think we're about to die. We can't build a relationship on a handful of near-death experiences and expect everything to just work out."

Claire pauses and looks up, seeing Owen watching her with a thoughtful expression.

"But still—I _miss_ you. And I'm tired of not knowing what we are, or how you feel, or whether this could be worth another shot. So—"

"So you decided the solution was tequila?"

She shrugs, wearing a half-smile. "Thought I'd take a page out of your book."

Owen gives her a rueful grin, one hand running along his jaw. "You know just because it's always my answer to problems doesn't make it a _good_ one." He sighs, letting out a slow breath. "Look—first things first—I need to know: are you saying this shit because you mean it, or is it just the alcohol talking?"

Claire's first impulse is to be offended, but she can see there's something genuine in the way he's looking at her, so she shakes her head. "Believe me, Owen, this isn't—I don't know—taking too many shots and getting up to sing "Edge of Seventeen" at karaoke night—"

"Sorry, you speaking from experience?"

"—it's not like that. I'm here because I want to be, and I'm not so tipsy that I don't know what I'm saying."

"Okay," he says, leaning back on his elbows. "Okay. Shit, Claire."

"It would be great if you said something other than that."

"Yeah, I—" he glances up at her. "I know. But this ain't a small thing, you and me. I don't wanna look back and wish I'd phrased thing different, or regret things I didn't say. I don't want to fuck it up, is what I'm trying to tell you."

Owen reaches for the tequila and Claire holds it out to him, her fingers brushing against his as his hand closes around the neck. He takes a slow drink, firelight refracting off the edges of the bottle.

"You know, I did a good job not thinking about you for fucking _months_ —spent the day working from sunup till I'd lose the light, and then I'd head into town and—" he looks up at her and lets out a half-laugh, "—and I'd drink beer and play pool until 'round about midnight. And then I'd come back here, and pass out, and wake up and do it all over again." His thumb runs a circle around the edge of the bottle's cap. "Didn't look at the news much or think about Nublar or Blue or fucking any of it. Just me and the cabin and scrambled eggs cooked on the RV stove.

"When I first saw you driving down the road, I knew it was over. Not the living-in-Montana part of it, or working on the cabin, but the idea that I could do either of those things and ignore that you were out in the world somewhere. And then Costa Rica happened and you—" Owen's voice breaks off. " _Fuck_ , Claire. Then I was watching the Gyro fill up with water, wondering if I was about to see you and Franklin drown in front of me."

Claire shifts sideways so she's sitting a little closer, and when Owen lifts his arm, she settles herself into his side, feeling the familiar weight of his hand on her back.

"If there's a chance to be with you," he says, wrapping his arm around her waist, "then I want that, too."

"What if it doesn't work?" Claire asks, quiet. "What if it _can't_. Last time, you left."

"You told me to go."

"So who's to say that won't happen again?" She looks up at him. "This feels so easy when the world is ending or I'm thinking I'm going to die at any moment, but what happens when things quiet down? What happens when there's no near-death experience and it's just the two of us on opposite sides of an argument?"

Owen's quiet for a moment—long enough that it's an effort for Claire not to break the silence—before he says, "Honestly? I don't know. But I know I want to be with you, and, right now, I'm having a hard time coming up with a situation where I'd rather be stubborn than find a way to make it work."

"You say that now—"

"No, Claire," Owen says, and she's not used to hearing him sound quite so earnest. "This isn't bullshit or heat-of-the-moment or fucking whatever. If you're serious about wanting this to happen, then so am I."    

She looks up at him and he runs a thumb along her jaw; when he leans down to kiss her, it feels more real and so much fucking _better_ than the quick moment they’d shared at Lockwood’s estate. It feels like a choice instead of an impulse. It feels like a promise.

The next morning, she wakes up to the sun coming over the mountains, stretched out in the grass with Owen alongside the ashes of the fire and the half-empty bottle of tequila. Her jeans are damp with morning dew and her neck and shoulders are aching in a dozen different places after falling asleep on the ground, but she can feel Owen’s arm around her waist, the warmth of his chest against her back, and even her hangover feels worth it.

 

—

 

There's a part of Claire that's been waiting for the other shoe to drop since they arrived in Montana, and so when she's waiting in the checkout to buy groceries and sees a front-page news article about Blue, she's mostly surprised that it took this long. She buys the paper and skims through the paragraphs while sitting in the front seat of the VW, knowing that the carton of ice cream in the back is likely going soft and not caring all that much. The article is brief, but tells her enough that she knows to feel scared—Blue causing trouble in a gated suburban complex, going after outdoor cats and small dogs, then attacking a man getting out of his car and a woman jogging in the early morning. At least two people in the community are missing, and she put a nine-year-old kid in the hospital.

She's going to be targeted—part of a larger policy push towards eliminating the carnivores that escaped from Lockwood. They've already caught and killed the _Allosaurus_ , and it's currently on display in a private collection. Claire feels sick at the thought of something similar happening to Blue.

Maisie's making lunch in the RV when Claire gets back, so she pulls Owen aside from where he's working on the living room walls and shows him the article. He doesn't say anything as he reads through it, but Claire can see the tension running through the set of his jaw, and the steel-sharp edge in his eyes. When he's done, he looks over at her, and she lets out a slow breath.

"I think it's time for us to go back."

**Author's Note:**

> in my version of canon, owen and claire are occasionally capable of having an honest conversation about themselves and their feelings, so, suck it colin trevorrow
> 
>  **edit** : when I first wrote this, I left the ending on something of a cliffhanger in case I wanted to come back and write part 2 (which, I figured, would mostly revolve around the conversation of dinosaurs roaming in the wild, particularly as it relates to blue) but I didn't have anything concrete planned or anything in progress. that said, the response to this has been so lovely and so encouraging that y'all might have convinced me to find the motivation to write part 2 sooner than I'd anticipated


End file.
